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Idubbbz finally released the content cop on tana monguea. I have been waiting to see idubbbz tana mongeau for a really long time and am finally it's out. let's talk a little bit about the content cop, idubbbz, tana mongeau, and "the n word"

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Tana is a youtuber who had 2.5 million subs. Idubbbz is a trending youtuber who exposes channels with shitty content. Tana said, "nigger" and drama ensued. Black Screen TV was livestreaming the repercussions (ie. subscriber loss as a result of her overt racism). Black Screen kept his steam up over night and when he woke up he noticed he had lost 20,000 of his 29,000 subscribers. When someone suggested that maybe it was a glitch he tested a theory and lost the remaining 10,000 in a matter of seconds. He is now currently at -1,500 subs (though Youtube has fixed it to read, "0").

I guess Youtube has said that this is just a visual bug.

Wild Dog said:

Still mad that he lost some free money???
I wish that Google pulls the plug on monetized channels, that would be a good thing. That will be a good clean up.

I disagree. Monetizing videos for ad revenue is a good incentive to create good content.

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I disagree. Monetizing videos for ad revenue is a good incentive to create good content.

In theory, it should be. But we can see the particular implementation Youtube has chosen rewards manipulative clickbait and low-brow efforts more than anything. It's sad, too, because this is not a problem inherent with monetization. It's just Google wanting to put as little work as possible to make as much money as possible. Clickbait thumbnails, amount of footage uploaded and first-mover advantage: those are all choices and not inevitabilities. Simple steps could drastically improve Youtube content.

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Monetisation isn't a bad thing here. It's the uploaders that upload crap and get money that makes it seem bad. There are high-quality videos here and there, which I believe that the uploader of said videos deserve some money for providing us with something cool to watch.

I always loved Tats Top Videos because you know that hard work was put into their videos, with the 3D models, smooth animations, video editing, sound editing, etc. they deliver (IMO) and I believe they deserve money of their videos. I watch those hour long videos endlessly like I play Doom.

But PewDiePie, Markiplier, etc post crap most of the time, and yet they get money off said videos. What baloney.

Phml said:

Clickbait thumbnails.

It's the uploader that gives those things. For example, recently I felt like watching a Brutal Doom 64 video of the titlemap (since I don't have it sadly nor probably run it), and in my recommendations, a video about... ANIME CRACKS 2016 #1 Didn't watch it out of lack of interest, but boy that thumbnail, I loled so hard.

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LOL, define "improve." Youtube is the only game in town for user-generated video content. What's the competition? Facebook I guess? Vimeo??

I don't believe for a second you're confused in good faith about the definition of the word "improve" in the sentence "improve Youtube content".

It's the uploader that gives those things.

Yes, but Youtube decides to allow these things. It is a frequent sight to see RECOMMENDED videos with MILLIONS of views and their thumbnails being one of two kinds: an almost naked woman, or the face of a youtuber with an exaggerated facial expression.

The more the popularity of your video relies on manipulative strategies, the less effort is comparatively put into actual content (given that our time is always limited). You will see the odd channel with hundred thousands views on each well crafted videos that took dozens of hours to produce, but they are dwarfed by "personalities" turning on their webcam and churning out hours of garbage per day.

Youtube owns their whole platform (obviously) and has ultimate power in choosing which content to promote. They could make the conscious choice to ensure a healthy rotation of upcoming talents, instead of the bigger fishes getting even more "screen time". They could set high viewer count triggers to investigate content for exploitative stuff, algorithmically or even manually, and then rank them lower in suggestions.

Rest assured Youtube (Google) has the means to do all that and more. This is not an issue of "can", but of "will". There is very much a philosophy at play here, the techie culture of building things to require no hands on input coupled with the unethical business culture of making as much money as possible while giving back as little as possible.

Youtube has strong means to make you smarter, but strong incentives to keep you dumb. If it were only an issue of being lazy, they could delegate the task to the users: for instance, giving you native tools to block channels and advertising this feature. But they really want you to click on that PewDiePie video and talk about it to your friends and come back the next day to watch the next video with the next bunch of ads.

There are predictable replies to this post. "lol who cares Youtube is a business they're well within their rights to do that". This is not a question of legality, but a matter of quality control. Youtube can absolutely push people to click on boobs and screaming manchildren all day, instead of using their power for good. It just doesn't make for quality content.

When garbage succeeds, more garbage is being made. Dishonest people would tell you this is what people like, so there's no fighting what's popular. In truth, we are social creatures strongly influenced by our surroundings. It's entirely possible to build positive environments resulting in high quality communities. Khan Academy uses gamification and a personal style of teaching to make learning seem cool. Twentysided is a gaming blog with an explicitely apolitical slant making the commenters particularly chill.

Those are respectively small and tiny examples compared to something like Youtube, and you might argue they are content producers rather than a platform. But then, youtube.com is in a way a content producer itself, as the necessary curation of the gigantic amount of content defines what you're going to see. Youtube absolutely has the power to encourage quality content and discourage clickbait.

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There are billions of videos with billions of clickbait thumbnails (one I already showed). Let's not forget that if you want your video to be seen, you have to apply some manipulative techniques. It's in our nature to do so, to persuade others as much as possible into doing what you want. Perfectly normal. Unfortunately, it's usually the crappy videos that lack some unique touch that have these titles. No wonder people dislike clickbait thumbnails.

Reviewing those thumbnails is time consuming too. YouTube's main focus should be the videos and their content themselves. Sure these vlogs or something seem like crap, but it seems like the majority enjoy watching them. It's like a personal look at the guy's life. If a lot of peope watch these videos, then more profit to YouTube/Google, why stop it, from their view?

If YouTube wants those "crap" removed, it's upto the uploaders to do so. It may be crap, but it's not breaking any laws. Nothing to do about it. When, if, uploaders get better in nature, they'll stop uploading said crap themselves. But doing so, they'll lose money, which again, they would prefer not do

My only dislike, as you say, are those personalities churning out garbage rather than something worth the watch eg should I watch "OMG I'm engaged!!!" or "Creating a Simple 3D Model"? Making videos of the former is much more easier, meaning more can be made, resulting more money, while the latter is the harder, meaning less can be made, less money earned.

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The issue with all of this is that, well, does it really make much sense for what it is? An entertainment medium that you just sit back and watch?

Think back to TV. Think about exactly how many channels there are, all the sort of stuff that's on. You could devote a lot of brainpower, energy, and time scanning through all the channels, picking out exactly what you want to do and working out an exact schedule so you can catch exactly what you want. That's entirely possible, and modern features do make it more convienent.

Or, y'know, you could just pick a regular channel, instantly get entertainment without flooding your brains with thoughts when you just want to relax, and just keep watching whatever's on that channel. Maybe switching to some other regular channel if you don't like what's currently on, hell you probably have a handful of regular channels for that exact reason, but you're still not going out of your way to put much thought into it.

Frankly, I'd suspect how truthful you'd be if you said you did the former far more than the latter. Maybe if you don't watch TV regularly and only really do so to catch specific programs, maybe, but as far as using it as a regular way to entertain yourself? There's really no real reason to overwhelm yourself with choices when you're just trying to find something to watch. The brain itself doesn't like doing stuff like that - sure, it likes being able to choose, but it doesn't like choosing from a lot of stuff. That requires an incredible amount of decision making power, which can exhaust it and is better saved for something more important.

Now, that's for something with like, hundreds of channels, maybe? Squaring that number is probably too low to even be in the ballpark of how many actual choices Youtube gives you.

There's just way too much stuff on there. Sure, they could do better curation ... but that's such a ridiculously difficult job that even if Google really do have the manpower to handle it, it's not remotely worthwhile to waste all that manpower on something like it. See, Youtube prioritizes channels that make videos often that are watched for long periods of time. That's because it provides viewers with something that they can just sit down and watch without having to go through the ridiculous amount of video content that's on the site. Channels like that create massive archives, and even after someone's managed to get through the entire thing, hey, there's probably going to be another video or two up tomorrow! Which means that they'll have something reliable to watch for a long time, and it'll still be pretty reliable after finishing the stockpile.

Now, consider having to go through every single video that is uploaded, and deciding if a. it's actually high-quality b. it actually is worthwhile of being curated c. it'll provide enough watch time when combined with the rest of the curated stuff to provide a simple viewing experience for the viewers and d. most people would actually want to watch it.

See, that's an issue with educational stuff: it's really great and fun if it grabs your interest, but otherwise it's just a bunch of info about stuff you care about which may not change your opinion in the slightest. Which means it's terrible as something to just watch, unless you just want to see your screen change shapes and for audio to enter one ear and go out the other. At which point, literally almost every video will do, so it ultimately doesn't matter what gets curated for that guy.

And really, if you're picking curated stuff, are you really doing anything more but just watching whatever's on a convenient place? You're not actively looking for anything in particular, it's just something to watch that seems interesting. Which, well, anything popular and related to your interests is perfect for that kind of thing. I'd really only start blaming Youtube for this kind of thing after we replace our brains with some sort of computer that is far better at making decisions without tiring itself out. Because, really, it's pretty well suited for how humans think and operate.

tl;dr since I feel like this is incredibly overworded: Youtube picks up stuff that's "low effort" ( admittedly let's plays usually are lower effect than animation, etc., but decent ones low effort? ) because it's actually what most people, and, most likely, you, want, since it means you'll have something regular to watch instead of having to search through millions of videos every single time you just want to watch something

P.S. If you want to avoid clickbait and stuff like that, consider actually supporting Youtube Red. Since it provides Youtubers with money that isn't linked to view time ( which, y'know, makes sense because of all that above stuff - you are making the most popular and thus best-for-ads content, after all ) it means they can avoid having to use that stuff to get attention and views. It's kind of like taking them off of a commission system and giving them a more regular income - they just have to do their job the best they can instead of having to pull off whatever gets them the most sales at the time.

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Reaction channels and prank channels are some of the worst things of all YouTube. Talk about exploiting loopholes to the nth degree. These "reactors" strip profit from content creators by sticking their original video in the bottom corner of the screen, while they purposely force themselves to laugh or massively over-exaggerate in response. Or sometimes they don't even bother and just give the laziest, most half-assed reaction. It takes zero effort, period. Nobody should subscribe to these shills.

Why support the original video with your view, when you can instead give your view to some random person and their reaction? And they are able to monetize these stolen views up until the time the content creator notices. At which point the video can be rightfully claimed, but the lost money is not reimbursed nor is it removed from the pockets of the reactors. Their business is a scam, and people fall for it.

Meanwhile the majority of prank videos are staged for views. With some exceptions, but not many. Apparently people enjoy this fake content, otherwise it wouldn't gain such a large fan following. Thankfully you can always choose to ignore it if you wish. It's easy to identify a prank or reaction video from the title/thumbnail. So don't click it.

Yes, there is a promotional algorithm that is based on view time. So it makes sense that vlogs and gaming videos attract the most amount of attention. These channels can often pump out a video every second day. They amass far more minutes worth of watch time with far less effort involved when compared to say, an old Smosh or MysteryGuitarMan skit.

At least that's how it worked initially.

Nowadays it seems the gaming and vlogging market is completely over-saturated. Newbies don't stand a chance unless they can really differentiate themselves from the crowd. And clickbait is used as a way to try and remedy this. The problem is that everyone is using clickbait of some kind. I see small channels with barely any subscribers clickbait constantly to no benefit.

Ultimately it's about creating and riding new trends. That's what really pulls in the views. At the moment it's cool to roast and diss people. First it started with LeafyIsHere, then he got "exposed" by idubbbz, who currently continues to "expose" other people, who start more drama... and the cycle goes on.

Look at the amount of views smaller channels are currently pulling in, simply by giving their opinions on the drama. Hundreds of thousands! "I agree with idubbbz, because X, Y and Z. I disagree, because X, Y and Z." Yeah, whatever it takes. Then wait for the next trend and do the exact same thing. In the meantime, talk about other controversial/trendy subjects.

Video game YouTubers have a far easier time keeping up with the trend riding compared to the vloggers and the "roasters." They just have to play and provide strategic tips for the latest, coolest game. Or follow up with the latest updates on the MMORPG that you play. Feed you some news that you can easily read for yourself online (hint: they often get it directly from the game's wiki or official website, in most cases). This applies to "Top Ten" fact channels as well, who usually rip their information right off the web and simply rearrange the wording for a video.

Educational videos can get quite a lot of attention too actually. Look at BraveNewWilderness, for example. He created a new trend in the style of Steve Irwin. That really broke free from the mold of excessive "Top Ten" fact channels.

Behold the cut-throat mentality driven by monetary incentive. And it isn't a bad thing necessarily. You don't get famous on YouTube for no reason. You get famous because people like and support you, period. Which can be... pretty baffling at times (reaction channels, wtf?)

* TL;DR = Stupid people make stupid content popular, and trends are everything.

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I disagree. Monetizing videos for ad revenue is a good incentive to create good content.

It doesn't work that way, it promotes click baits and copycats just to get some free money....
Like the thousands of "gamers" that try to mimic the AVGN.
"Gamers" doing "I REACT TO THIS GAME!!!!" with their fake reactions.
The people that love their art, they do it for free, if their art is good the money will find them. A lot of youtubers where making money with their videos before Google started to pay people....
Here is the otherway around, their art is shitty and their are chasing the money.

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There is no competition for Youtube. It manages to fall short of breaking even. I can't imagine Vimeo or Daily Motion ever overtaking it.

The real problem is 3 minutes of Patreon thank yous at the end of 3 minute videos or some that even have the thank yous before the video starts because they hate people. You can skip ads, but you can't skip those without some effort.

Do you know how annoying it is to pay $10 for Youtube Red only to hear Patreon thank yous when the video is over? I need to get up and hit the next button or sit through the same canned thank yous.

Even Youtubers with quality and edited content have turned into Q & A (answering a single question) or easy content such as unboxing videos or discussing a drama topic. Then again, if it still gets traffic they should.

I've unsubscribed far more in the past year. To those channels that I used to love, I never think of them after I unsubscribe. I never wonder oh what are they up to now? I used to like their content.

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Even Youtubers with quality and edited content have turned into Q & A (answering a single question) or easy content such as unboxing videos or discussing a drama topic. Then again, if it still gets traffic they should.

Precisely this as well. Why fix what isn't broken? Just do what makes money. Where does the money come from? Fan support, and their viewership. I can understand this mentality from content creators.

When fans are tired of stale content, they will complain and eventually leave. This drives change, or should. But if that point never comes... cha ching! Ride the gravy train forever.

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Precisely this as well. Why fix what isn't broken? Just do what makes money. Where does the money come from? Fan support, and their viewership. I can understand this mentality from content creators.

When fans are tired of stale content, they will complain and eventually leave. This drives change, or should. But if that point never comes... cha ching! Ride the gravy train forever.

And that is the problem, it's so dull.... Look for example if you search for Resident Evil 7 reviews.... You will find that most of them are done by a fool that's "Angry" an cursing every two words....

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^ It might be a problem for you, if agitated reviews aren't your thing. But they must be appealing to some other people if the format works well enough to be copied by so many different content creators. The more conventional review style is basically taken by IGN and Gamespot already. And that isn't working out so well for them it seems. Their RE7 review is 50% dislikes. The Angry Jo Review is all love and support. Same with this guy, who swears a lot it seems.

If all else fails you could always just watch some plain gameplay without any commentary and decide based on that. That's what I do, so I admit I'm not really in the loop as to who the other angry reviewers are you're referring to. I went through a bunch of videos on YouTube but nothing really jumped out at me as being too out of the ordinary. All of the videos I found (except IGN) seem to have nothing but likes and support. So the general consensus is that there isn't a problem? If people aren't happy and want change, they should make their voices heard. That doesn't seem to be the case, or at least it isn't the majority opinion.

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^ It might be a problem for you, if agitated reviews aren't your thing. But they must be appealing to some other people if the format works well enough to be copied by so many different content creators.

The format works, that's quite clear and that's why i would love to see the end of monetized youtube. Like i say, that will do a nice clean up of youtube.

You search for a Review of a game, the first thing that you see are the "Angry" Dudes and dudettes, you see the comments and a bunch 5 years old kid saying how cool they are because they said cunt......

Now let's say you want to info about the Iphone 7 or the Google pixel. What you will find?
"WILL IT BLEND!!?? BLENDER VS IPHONE7S!!!"
".50 CAL VS IPHONE 7!!!! WILL IT SURIVE THE .50 CAL!!!!"
"I WILL EAT AN IPHONE 7 FOR 50000 SUBS!!! COMMENT!!"
"IS THE IPHONE 7 A GOOD BASEBALL???? LET'S FIND OUT!!!"
"ANGRY REVIEW OF ANGRY GUY REVIEW ANGRY IPHONE 7 (PARENTAL ADVISORY STRONG LANGUAGE!!!)"

Deep down of that sea of trash, you will find a guy that does an actual review of the Phone...
........

These seem like actual reviews of the iPhone to me. Nothing on the first (or second, or third) page matched the sort of video titles you're suggesting.

I don't really see anything wrong with people being able to make money from video content. Even if it is really stupid. People out there clearly enjoy TechRax enough to get him to 5 millions subscribers for doing nothing but break technology. He built an audience fair and square, by doing crazy things that most normal people would never do. If nobody wanted TechRax to be rich, everyone could just proceed to never click on one of his videos again. It's as simple as that. Voila, he'd be worthless. We (the viewers) have the power to control what creators make financially.

Why remove potential ad revenue from thousands of legitimate, quality content creators? Just because there are some you don't like?

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Lucky you, most of the time it show me first the trending one. I wonder if it has something to do that i'm not using Youtube US, but AR(Country Variant).

Those legitimate, quality content creators, most of the time, have their own website and other sites. An Example of this are the people from "Channel Awesome"; "cinemassacre" among others.
If you do like weapons, you must know hickok45, for example even if youtube remove the "monetize" thing, he will be still making money from their videos, thanks to the sponsors he get from gunshops and Ammunition mfg.

"If nobody wanted TechRax to be rich, everyone could just proceed to never click on one of his videos again"
It has nothing to do with them being rich, it is that they flood youtube with novelty contect. I guess that i'm one the few unlucky that get spammed.
And about people not watching, well there are a lot of people that do like to see that kind of videos.

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Lucky you, most of the time it show me first the trending one. I wonder if it has something to do that i'm not using Youtube US, but AR(Country Variant).

Not sure, I've never had this issue before.

Wild Dog said:

"If nobody wanted TechRax to be rich, everyone could just proceed to never click on one of his videos again"
It has nothing to do with them being rich, it is that they flood youtube with novelty contect. I guess that i'm one the few unlucky that get spammed.

Novelty content? So you mean new, original, or unusual? Yeah, I guess that fits what TechRax does. Maybe that's why he's pulling in way more views than James (Cinemassacre) is currently. He also uploads less often than James, so you could argue that James is the one flooding the market with pointless gaming videos nobody cares about. But that's not right either, because at the end of the day "legitimate content" is subjective. Who/what is seen as "legitimate" will vary from person to person. Technically speaking, anyone could be a legitimate content creator to someone.

And so it makes no sense to suddenly say "nope, no ad revenue for anyone anymore! Because I don't like what channels X, Y and Z are doing. Wah!" Or you could just ignore them. That works too. And spare the rest of YouTube. Can you imagine the amount of backlash from ending monetized revenue across all channels? Oh my goodness... and they'd have a right to be pissed off.

Wild Dog said:

And about people not watching, well there are a lot of people that do like to see that kind of videos.

Yes, exactly. People enjoy the videos. You might not, but others do. Millions of others.

Wild Dog said:

Those legitimate, quality content creators, most of the time, have their own website and other sites. An Example of this are the people from "Channel Awesome"; "cinemassacre" among others.
If you do like weapons, you must know hickok45, for example even if youtube remove the "monetize" thing, he will be still making money from their videos, thanks to the sponsors he get from gunshops and Ammunition mfg.

So are you suggesting that everyone on YouTube leaves in order to form their own website as a means to make money instead? Yeah, because that worked sooo well for James back in the ScrewAttack days. He wasn't making crap compared to what he started making after his (exact same videos) launched on YouTube. Why? Because YouTube is a great platform for exposure and making profit. Better than people give it credit for. I have a hard time believing that a small content creator would be better off as a random website floating around the web. Uploading to Vimeo? No chance in hell. YouTube rules the video market.

And you can't rely on sponsors alone to make money. What if you can't find sponsors? Honestly, if personal websites really are the better alternative, why hasn't everyone done it? Those people you mentioned are also on YouTube, making money. And I doubt they'd want to have it limited to only one avenue of income. If you can make both work, great.

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Presenting an accurate subscriber count in real time that works at scale is a surprisingly difficult problem.

So yes, they kind of are like that 24/7. Literally anything else would be. As it turns out a visual glitch of an asynchronous independent counter is just a lot more noticeable, despite it being a relatively minor and ineffective problem.